In a recent op-ed, Celestin GUELA SIMO, CEO of Afriland First Bank, emphasizes the crucial importance of a strong and independent economic press for the development of the CEMAC financial market. He highlights an often-overlooked fragility of the regional economic architecture: the relative weakness of its economic and financial press.
According to Mr. GUELA SIMO, when an international investor considers injecting tens of millions of euros into the CEMAC region, they struggle to find reliable, structured, and contextualized economic information produced locally. Too often, this information comes from dispatches produced outside the sub-region, and rarely from the capitals of CEMAC.
He insists that an economy does not develop solely with capital, infrastructure, or regulations, but also with reliable, accessible, and intelligible information. A competent economic press is therefore a market infrastructure in its own right, on par with efficient payment systems or rating agencies. It contributes to market depth, investor education, and the quality of dialogue between regulators and operators.
Mr. GUELA SIMO warns against the consequences of misinformation, pointing out that false news about a bank's solvency can trigger a panic with systemic consequences in a matter of days. A credible and independent economic press then acts as a bulwark, replacing rumor with data and distrust with transparency.
He calls on CEMAC's financial players – banks, insurance companies, microfinance institutions, brokerage firms, investment funds, fintechs, and regulators – to actively engage with the economic press. This commitment should not be limited to promotional communication but should consist of explaining financial professions, popularizing economic mechanisms, sharing useful data, and supporting the training of specialized journalists.
Mr. GUELA SIMO identifies three risks to avoid in supporting the economic press: capture by advertisers, dispersion of resources without clear criteria, and confusion of genres between sponsorship, advertising, and editorial partnership. He proposes three levers to build a robust economic press ecosystem: facilitating journalists' access to information and experts, supporting specialized training, and establishing a CEMAC Economic Journalism Prize.
For Afriland First Bank, this commitment is consistent with its HORIZON 2030 strategic vision, which places the transformation of Central Africa at the heart of its priorities. Mr. GUELA SIMO calls on other major players in the financial sector to make support for the economic press a pillar of their economic and social responsibility.
"CEMAC deserves better than borrowed narratives. It deserves pens, newsrooms, investigations, and analyses that speak from within its own transformation," concludes Célestin Guela Simo.
